Snaps: Deepavali, the festival of lights.

If you read my latest post - Happy Deepavali, then you’d know that I posted that in a
completely sleep deprived condition in my attempt to be productive. Who am I
kidding? I’m the best procrastinator I have ever met, so I ended up posting two
pictures from the shoot when in my head I planned for like five. ha-ha. =.=’

(and now I’m thinking nobody wants to read what crap I have
to say)

Seriously.

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Like I briefly mentioned in my previous post, I was out
shooting with a group of friends at an Indian temple yesterday night. It was my
first time attending and shooting a Deepavali celebration, although the
atmosphere yesterday was not so much of a festive celebration. What went down
yesterday was the lighting of hundreds of candles all over the temple, where
people donated money and in exchange, they were given candles to light and to
place them in the temple. In other words, it is called “Diva Lighting For
Charity”. I am not familiar as to whether any other Indian temple practice
the same tradition, to light candles on the eve of the Deepavali celebration.
Yes, today is the actual day by the way.

For this shoot, I went trigger happy and shot quite a number of
pictures. But as I came back and reviewed the pictures, I realised most of them
were repetitive and for the rest, they were just pictures which doesn’t tell
stories, or I just didn’t like them. In the end, out of all the pictures I took,
there is about give and take ten photos at most. I’m going to stop rambling now,
so enjoy the pictures!

If you noticed I shot a picture of this deity (I'm sorry I didn't get the name) from a different angle in my previous post (Happy Deepavali). Similar to that picture, this was also shot with the 25mm CCTV lens. During my post-processing, I didn't add any vignette to it so this is as it is from the lens. I'm pretty happy with the results from the CCTV lens, I think I'll do a separate post on that lens alone.

To read more, click here.

Namasté

This little kid whose name starts with an R, is the most adorable expressive hyperactive kid I have ever met. He is also pretty much photogenic on camera, except that he keeps bouncing up and down so much that it was difficult to get a clear shot of him. I switched to continuous AF to try to get a clear picture of him. That worked, so you'll see more of him later. :)

I never loved black and white so much, until I post processed this into a black and white picture. Strip all the colors, and it's just too gorgeous.

This was photographed in a completely dark hall illuminated by hundreds of candles. It was such a beautiful sight.(The little girl is the younger sister of the girl pictured above by the way).

Daddy's little boy

I did finally get a good clear picture of him and I've never been more amazed with what my camera can do coupled with the 45mm, I do love love this lens so much more with every time I shoot with it.

I think by now, you get what I mean by the pictures were somewhat
repetitive. I decided to make most of my subjects as the children, and the
pictures appear to be overlapping when you see them in a set. But I do love each
of the pictures I posted here, which is why I decided to post them anyway.

* * * * * * * * * *

I hope you enjoyed reading this short post, and till the next shutter therapy! Happy Deepavali once again!

PS - I posted this picture up on my Instagram (@itscarmenhong) earlier, so follow me there if you want to see more pictures before they go on my blog, coupled with other pictures that I might not publish here. :)

7 comments:

Hey Carmen,Quality is more important than quantity, and the best photographers have one thing in common: knowing how to hide their bad images and only show the best ones. This is called "editing" (not post-processing, but more like news editing). You are doing it right!I see that the Olympus signature color is very well retained! Some very good shots Carmen, glad you came along, and I am sure you will find the 45mm F1.8 to be a very useful lens.

That was what that went through my mind as I was deciding which to post, I love so many other pictures from the set but in the end I had to pick the best of the similar ones. I'm glad I did too, the whole experience itself was fun and I learned more about the festival itself too. Now, I'm actually considering the 45mm. Haha.